Successful cropping of Einkorn and Emmer

Einkorn and Emmer have very tall plant heights. Thus, the risk of lodging is high and the farmer should address his main focus on the reduction of plant height. This can be done by reduced fertilization, use of growth regulators and others. Einkorn has a very slow youth development, thus herb control is an important issue in its production.

For Einkorn and Emmer, only hulled kernels exist as seeds, which requires that the sowing machine is driven more slowly. As both are susceptible against soil borne diseases, we highly recommend seed treatments. Emmer is quite susceptible against powdery mildew, brown and yellow rust requiring sometimes the use of fungicides. In contrast, Einkorn seems to be resistant against recent wheat diseases. For Emmer, spring and winter varieties exits, the latter only with a limited winter hardiness. In contrast, most Einkorn varieties can be grown as winter and spring crop. However, Einkorn as spring crop will delay harvest to late August/September. Like for bread wheat, winter forms yield higher grain yields than the spring forms.

For the harvest, we recommend to drive the combine-harvester slowly and to slightly adapt the settings. We highly recommend to grow Einkorn and Emmer only under cropping contracts with mills. For more detailes look here.